This invention relates to an improved construction and arrangement of parts to provide a test station of the type employed to monitor electrical currents and potentials associated with underground piping, cables and the like. More particularly, the present invention relates to such a test station made from plastic material that is non-corrosive and electrically protective for field installation without special tool requirements and to the improvement in the construction of the test station to provide access to test terminals from both sides of a terminal block while the test station is supported by a novel anchor arrangement.
Test stations are typically employed to provide aboveground terminals for convenient monitoring of electrical currents and potentials associated with numerous types of underground piping, cables and other metallic structures. For example, test stations are used as a terminal point for test leads to read underground structure to soil potentials, cathodic protection anode currents, the resistive integrity of insulating flanges and joints as well as the integrity of insulation between various types of underground metallic structures including a pipe, its casing or carrier. Such test stations are also used for detecting and measuring stray electrical currents in underground or subterranean structures as well as for reading electrical potential.
In the past, a test station was made from a conduit and fittings consisting of aluminum material. Not only does the aluminum material undergo destructive corrosion but also it offered no protection to personnel against electrical shocks. The test terminals were usually housed in a heavy cast aluminum structure that had a removable cover plate for access to only one side of the terminals without physically detaching the entire terminal block from the stationary cast aluminum enclosure. Moreover, this portion of the enclosure included a threaded flange to receive the threaded end of a conduit pipe. After installation of a test station was completed, it was a difficult and cumbersome operation to remove the cast aluminum enclosure from the conduit pipe since the threaded interconnection was usually corroded and the lead wires had to be removed from the test terminals to accommodate the required rotation to disconnect the threaded interconnection.